This invention relates to sending notifications to a user of a social networking system, and in particular to suggesting opt-out of notifications to users of the social networking system.
Social networking system store social information provided by users including but not limited to hometown, current city, education history, employment history, photos, and events the user participated in the user's profile. Users utilize social networking systems because social networking systems allow users to create connections with friends and interact with each other. Social networking systems allow users to view other user's profile, organize events, and invite friends to participate in those events.
Users spend time in a social networking system viewing other users' profiles, pictures and posts. Oftentimes users find value in using a social networking system because they can obtain information and updates about their friends it would have been otherwise hard to obtain. For example, a user may have a friend that moved abroad. Using the social networking system, the user can find out what his friend has been doing and see his friend's photos the minute they are uploaded onto the social networking system.
A social networking system may store large amount of information that may be of interest to a user. This includes information describing other users that are connected to the user and user actions taken by different users. The social networking system may provide information describing these actions as notifications to the user. A user may be interested in some of these user actions but may not be interested in all the user actions available in the social networking system. To provide a good experience to users, the social networking system preferably sends notifications that are likely to be of interest to its users and does not send notifications that its users would find bothersome.